Filthy messages in hundreds of foreign bottles washed up on SA beaches
17 July 2021 - 09:37
Plastic bottles litter the beach in Milnerton, Cape Town.
Image: Peter Ryan
Nearly half the plastic bottles littering remote SA beaches have crossed the Indian Ocean or been dumped by ships, a new study has found.
Many bottles found on the southeast coast are between four and six years old and come from Indonesia, according to researchers at Cape Town and Nelson Mandela universities.
Prof Peter Ryan
Image: University of Cape Town
Recent manufacturing dates on bottles from China, Europe and South America show they must have been illegally dumped by ships, said lead researcher Prof Peter Ryan from UCT's FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology.